Defiant officials would be put behind bars, warns CJ

Expressing disapproval over the rising complaints about non-implementation of court orders, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry remarked that the officials not complying with the court orders would be incarcerated. During the hearing of a case about non-implementation of SC orders regarding demotion of grade-22 officers, the CJ gave a dressing-down to secretary establishment, saying that, court rulings are not joke, and asked him to tell the court would they be executed or not. Keeping a soft tone for the Prime Minister, Chaudhry said that the former must be misguided by the bureaucracy because he himself has been busy in national and foreign affairs. Tell the court the names of those officials, who forwarded the promotion summary to the PM to mislead him, they will be sent to jail, an angry CJ asked the Secretary Est. The apex court ordered the Secretary Establishment Division and Attorney General to present the summary sent to the premier and the notification that has been issued later vis-a-vis the promotions of 54 bureaucrats to grade-22. The prime minister reshuffled almost the entire top brass of the bureaucracy on Sept 4 last year, replacing over a dozen federal secretaries and announcing changes in several ministries by promoting civil servants to grade 22. Those who had been promoted out of turn to BS-22 include Prime Ministers Principal Secretary Nargis Sethi, Petroleum Secretary Kamran Lashari, Punjab Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmood Khan Khosa, Interior Secretary Maj (retd) Qamar Zaman, Election Commission Secretary Ishtiaq Ahmed Khan, FBR Chairman Sohail Ahmed, CDA Chairman Imtiaz Inayat Elahi, Board of Revenues Member for Sindh Ghulam Ali Pasha, Anti-Narcotics Secretary Tariq Masood Khan Khosa and Ambassador to China Masood Khan. Those ignored in the promotions moved the Supreme Court, complaining of massive injustice on which the highest court struck down PM Gilanis order of promoting 54 bureaucrats to grade 22 and said that the discretion exercised by the prime minister was not in consonance with the well-known principles of fair play and good governance.